Must I live with you, Pain?

Bill Stuntz is a professor of law at Harvard facing metastatic colon cancer. He is also a conservative and evangelical Christian. His blog is wonderful, but I rarely read it -- a shame, since every time I do, I find something that influences or echoes my thoughts. Today I found at least three things I wanted to link to or comment on (including an interesting idea for Souter's replacement), but I'll stick to this poem about pain by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you

All through my life? Sharing my fire, my bed,

Sharing — oh, worst of all things! — the same head? —

And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too?

So be it, then, if what seems true, is true:

Let us to dinner, comrade, and be fed:

I cannot die till you yourself are dead,

And, with you living, I can live life through.

Yet have you done me harm, ungracious guest,

Spying upon my ardent offices

With frosty look; robbing my nights of rest;

And making harder things I did with ease.

You will die with me: but I shall, at best,

Forgive you with restraint, for deeds like these.